The ants...

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Zai-en-ken

Well, yeah, they operate differently as a collective, but as the second article says:

"The similarities between ants and neurons 'suggest there are general principles of organization for building groups far smarter than the smartest individuals in them'."

Scientists are only using them as living analogies to try to better understand neurons. Ants as a collective do not have true intelligence, because as the first article says, they communicate with chemicals, a system which is not streamlined enough to convey things like ideas, memories, or emotions, all of which are standards for whether or not an animal is sentient.

Yet they out-build and out preform almost every species on earth.

[Raiden]

Originally Posted by Aihwa

Yet they out-build and out preform almost every species on earth.

Yeah, they're kind of wierd that way. If they knew what they were capable of, they could do some scary things.

In fact, the only thing keeping insects in general from getting bigger and more intelligent is a lack of lungs.

Since insects use spiracles (tiny holes in the sides of their body) and a tube system to bring air directly in contact with their tissues without using blood. This sounds great on paper, but it means that air gets bottlenecked in some spaces where the tubes need to be smaller so that they have room for their organs. If they had lungs and a vertebrate-like cardiovascular system, they would get big and intelligent very fast, since they have such short life cycles (causing natural selection to go into overdrive).